Un Trip: raúlrsalinas & the Poetry of Liberation - A Review

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Alex Avila

Anne Lewis and Laura Varela’s Un Trip: raúlrsalinas and the Poetry of Liberation is a short film that shoulders the weight of a lifetime. Clocking in at just under half an hour, it eschews the standard biographical mold and instead works like a piece of music—riffing, circling, and layering image, word, and sound. Its foundation is Salinas’s pivotal 1969 prison poem “Un Trip through the Mind Jail,” written while he was locked inside Leavenworth. The poem, once described in a doctoral dissertation by an Italian scholar as the Chicano equivalent to Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," shimmers as the film's jazz-inflected pulse, a way of hearing not just Salinas’s voice but also the eternal echoes of the communities he wrote for.

As a cinematic expression, its visual style mirrors this improvisational rhythm. Instead of a neatly ordered chronology, the filmmakers choose a split-screen approach that juxtaposes archival footage, neighborhood fragments, and performance. The effect is less explanatory than experiential: the viewer feels the disruption of displacement and the vibration of language, reminiscent of the Beat Generation poetics Salinas referenced obliquely in his literary work. A jazz thread woven organically into the framing, composition and chromatic elements comprising the design, look and feel of Un Trip, reinforcing the sense that Salinas, as a writer and proto-spoken word artist, embodied the spirit of bebop experimentation and community performance.

The film is also steeped in social urgency. Alongside the written word, and textual flourishes, we glimpse East Austin’s La Loma neighborhood—erased by development—and listen to contemporary poetry workshops in detention centers, where young voices continue the tradition of writing as survival. These scenes remind us that the issues and concerns Salinas addressed as an organizer, activist and artist—mass incarceration, racism, and cultural erasure—were not holdover relics of the 1970s. They remain with us, and the film frames his poetry as a living. breathing intervention.

According to Dr. Louis Mendoza, PhD, a renowned Salinas scholar, the film is “an aesthetically rendered treatment of Raúl Salinas’ poetic and social vision through the lens of his signature poem… gritty, poignant, and lyrical” (varelafilm.org). That observation captures what Lewis and Varela have achieved: a film that honors Salinas’s artistry while keeping its edge, refusing to gloss over or buff away the grit of prison life or the pain of community loss.

The balance of voices in the film reflects a passionate personal ethos by which Salinas lived. We hear commentary from poets, scholars, and peers, but never so much that it overshadows Salinas himself. His voice—the cadence of his poems, the whole, halved and quartered notes of his delivery—remains central. This inherent curatorial thread gives the audience a chance to engage with him directly, without too much interpretive scaffolding.

For Paul Stekler, veteran documentary filmmaker and founder of the Center for Politics and Governance at the LBJ School of Public Affairs in Austin, Texas, the viewing experience “reminds me of being at the old Nuyorican Poets Café in New York, where poetry, jazz, and politics mixed freely…” (varelafilm.org). The comparison is apt. Un Trip feels less like a lecture and more like a performance space, alive with improvisation, political urgency, and artistic fire.

The documentary is deliberately concise. Those seeking a full biography might walk away wanting more, but that restraint or absence of informational overload in intentional. Rather than attempting to summarize and encapsulate the life of an iconic, if less known than he deserves to be, figure, the filmmakers open a doorway into his vision. They point us toward his books, his activism, and his community work, imbuing the film with a uniquely dual spirit as both an homage and a warmly extended invitation.

Their decision to forego chronological narrative in favor of more formalist aesthetic considerations is what makes Un Trip a particularly poignant and meaningful work in an often crowded field of biographical documentaries. Instead of flattening a radical life for reshaping along an efficient predictable arc, they embrace fragmentation in which lyricism is frequently complemented by soundless imagery. This decisive refusal to dilute his immediate voice with ambient or digitally enhanced sound flourishes is a reflection the poet’s own legendary resistance to conformity. The film thus succeeds not only in terms of its merits as a work of cinematic art but also for the respectful way it assumes stewardship over critical and endangered cultural memory.

For Chicanx communities, the film resonates as both remembrance and call to action. It keeps alive the words of a poet who insisted that art must serve liberation at multiple levels, and it makes visible the ongoing struggles around incarceration, displacement, and erasure. For new audiences, it’s a striking introduction that blends poetry with politics in a way that still feels fresh.

Un Trip: raúlrsalinas and the Poetry of Liberation is, in the words of Dr. Mendoza, “gritty, poignant, and lyrical.” It is also, as Stekler puts it, “just wonderful.” Taken together, those descriptions mark the film as an achievement: intimate, challenging, and alive.

Don’t miss the free screening on Saturday, October 4 at 6 p.m. at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA. The event features a Q & A with filmmaker Laura Varela and a Flor y Canto with Luis J. Rodríguez, Josiah Luis Alderete, Soledad con Carne, Iris de Anda, and Ben V. Olguín. Special guests include Michael Sedano of La Bloga and writer Abel Salas, publisher and editor of Brooklyn & Boyle. A reception in the Poets’ Garden will be held before and after the film. Come for the screening, stay for the poetry and dialogue, and celebrate the living legacy of raúlrsalinas.

Dr. Alex Avila is a filmmaker based in Austin, Texas and a professor of mass communications at Texas State University and Huston-Tillotson University.